Crime Reform Business Analysis, Project Management, and Software Engineering

Project Brief

Responding to ever-increasing costs of Corrections without assurance of the effectiveness of prison time, the Alaska Legislature passed a criminal justice reform bill.  The bill’s intent was to reduce the number of people in prison and reduce correctional costs without compromising public safety.  The initial implementation involved meeting an aggressive timeline to satisfy the Legislature’s requirements.  There have been significant modifications to the crime bills by the Legislature since adoption but the changes implemented earlier are still being utilized and/or modified to satisfy the new requirements.

Wostmann partnered with RKV Technologies https://rkvtechnologies.com/ in Missouri for their specialty expertise with Correction Systems and the underlying framework. Our team worked closely with power users of the systems at the Department of Corrections and delved deeply into the crime reform and existing systems to identify and make the changes needed to meet this critical deadline. In addition to business analysis, our team managed the overall project, designed the changes in conjunction with users, programmed the changes, and conducted and coordinated system and user testing. In many cases, by working closely with the power users, Wostmann was able to identify savings by recognizing workflow changes that could simplify the technical change requirements.

Wostmann was subsequently awarded the second phase of the project, supporting a new PreTrial Division with business analysis, project management, and software engineering.  The PreTrial Division monitors what is known as “pretrial” inmates who may be out of jail before the court date. The PreTrial Division is actively monitoring thousands of pretrial defendants promoting public safety and court appearances in Alaska.

Deliverables

  • Modified the existing systems and business practices to support the required legislative changes to Correctional systems

  • Modified the existing system to support the new business practices for the brand-new Division of Pretrial

  • Added additional requested functionality and enhancements, which allowed correction officers to do their jobs more effectively and efficiently

  • Assisted DOC in reporting to the legislature on Probation, Parole, and Pretrial

  • Left the Corrections systems with improvements in performance and data quality

Related Work

State and Local Contracts

Wostmann & Associates has more than 25 years experience in state government technology projects. We have supported the State of Alaska in a variety of initiatives, from website and reporting systems to complex integration and enterprise systems and we welcome opportunities to any state with our experienced, senior technology professionals. We often perform our government services via our joint-venture partnership, Alaska IT Group, which combines our services with those of other leading small technology firms. Wostmann and Alaska IT Group are registered in Alaska for several IT service categories listed below. State agencies and local governments may utilize the Alaska Task Order Procurement System (TOPS) for our services or may contact us directly for more information.

  • Cat 2: Mid-range Systems Support

  • Cat 3: Specialized Server and Middleware Administration

  • Cat 4: Data Center Consulting

  • Cat 5: Security Consulting

  • Cat 6: IT Management Consulting

  • Cat 7: IT Procurement and Grant Services

  • Cat 8: OS390 and Z/OS Mainframe Applications Programming Support

  • Cat 9: Distributed Application Analysis, Design and Programming

  • Cat 10: Document Management

  • Cat 12: Project Management

  • Cat 13: Quality Assurance